Avolution ABACUS Reviews

When a client is looking for information on how to leverage an EA tool or how to look at the analysis that can come from an EA repository using the tool to create reports and dashboards, I can demonstrate that to them. 

I can demonstrate capabilities of what EA tools should be doing and how they should be doing it. 

Whether the client has a current tool in place or not, I can compare the information that needs to be gathered when you're documenting your architecture. Then I can tell the client that this is why the information is important to document. It may seem trivial or non-important at the time but it's important for later on because it allows for analysis and to do things such as project interdependencies reporting. This provides the ability to identify lags in the project delivery, where projects may depend on capabilities being in place but are not in place already. You will now have a lag for another project that is going to deliver early.

It gives you things for capability overlaps, gaps, and standards. 

The most valuable feature is that it has a customizable meta-model, which is key. It has extensive uses of catalogs, which can also be called inventories or taxonomies, and that is important as an enterprise architect. A solution designer would need that.

Rather than starting from scratch, leveraging a section of the predetermined solution and then plugging it into the solution that they're trying to develop provides interoperability or greater potential for it.

One of the key things that Abacus does is that it has a 3D modeling capability that can identify multiple levels of connectivity of components through their 3D views.

An example is looking at if A is connected to B and B is connected to C and C is connected to D and so on, you can have multiple levels of connectivity which wouldn't necessarily be obvious because you don't document it. The tool makes the connection for you.

If you are going to change the tactical standard in your organization and you were going to make everything TCP/IPv6 and you are no longer going to use V4, everything has to be V6. You will want to know what the impact is going to be before you make the change. How many different solutions and how many different systems are out there that you have to change or modify.

You can do an impact assessment through Abacus. You can then model it better and you can manage your standards, and also you can manage your solutions simultaneously.

You can see which capabilities may impact where you wouldn't normally connect a standard to a business function or a business capability.

You can also do it through this nth degree of connectivity. It's making it less complex, but more aware of your business environment.

A good example would be if you were going to remodel your home and you want to know where every electrical plug-in is and what fuse it is connected to. That would be very helpful before just going in there and guessing. It's a lot more, as it will tell you if you have different levels of connectivity. For example, you want to go in and change one thing, but what is that change going to do? While you can change a fuse or a receptacle, if you don't know what it touches then you are going to shock yourself.

Another great feature is that you can create reports on the fly.

It's a role-based tool, where you can identify who can change what type of models. They have different permissions and you can manage those very easily within the tool.

One of the things I like about this tool is that you can do an "as is" and "to be" set of models and you can compare them.

I'm a consultant, and it is used for making clients realize the capabilities of EA tools. There are not that many people using the tool right now. I use it as an example to get clients to be aware of what potential they have.

It is easier for the users of the tool to gain in-depth knowledge of how they're operating and the impact of their changes.

I conducted an evaluation of enterprise architecture at the European Court in Luxembourg, reviewing and analyzing existing implementations to identify potential improvements and providing recommendations.

I conduct evaluations to identify potential improvements and make recommendations, forming a roadmap for future projects and implementations.

The tool's implementation is straightforward as everything is readily available. For instance, setting up a portal is seamless, allowing easy publishing and access to data. However, integrating with other tools like BI, Power BI, or Grafana requires setting up pipelines between them.  

It is suitable for sectors like transportation and retail for predictive data analysis.The tool's most beneficial feature is its predefined components and connectors. These components provide a clear roadmap. Additionally, the predefined standards and best practices ensure adherence to organizational standards.  

The solution's support for multiple frameworks has made my work easier. I can choose which framework to use when starting a new project or updating an existing one. With just one click, I could access all the necessary files and tools for my project. This streamlined pulling data, setting up pipelines, and integrating with other systems like CMDB and asset management.

It offers predefined models and standards, which can be helpful. Secondly, its documentation and development structure are good. 

Avolution ABACUS has the drawback of needing data filtering at the development level, unlike some tools that offer filtering at deployment. Two areas where Avolution ABACUS could be improved are regional support and flexibility in model selection. Sometimes, it's challenging to access support or updates in certain regions, which can slow down progress. Additionally, it would be beneficial if the tool allowed more flexibility in selecting multiple models within a single unit.

It would be great if we could select multiple models within one project. Also, having better data filtering options would be useful. It would save a lot of time if the architecture diagrams could update automatically whenever the data changes instead of being updated manually every time.

We use Avolution ABACUS for all of our enterprise architecture modeling and diagrams across all of our banks.

The most valuable features of the solution are that, firstly, it is a comprehensive tool. Secondly, the impact analysis study is very good in the tool. Lastly, the customization of metadata is great.

I use the studio version, which is more of a desktop version as opposed to the enterprise version, which provides more of the analytics and intelligence capability.

The ease of modeling and the ease of showing interconnectivity and relationships is the most valuable. It is fairly simple and out of the box. It is customizable in many ways. It is a pretty good tool.

I am an integrator, integrating solutions for your client, a bank.

It's used for enterprise architecture, mathematical design, and reports.

Avolution ABACUS has cost-related elements for capturing IT landscape costs in terms of different components, databases, licensing, and operating costs. We can track project costs for the next financial year or transformation roadmap. This is another key difference from other products.

We leverage the scenario planning and forecasting features.

Our primary use case is for handling the enterprise architecture planning in the company. We are in banking debt processing. We are currently using it for handling the application domain architecture.  

Something that is really valuable to us in using this tool is actually really very simple and generic regarding integrating application data components. Sometimes there is a component in an application that I want to use as a module or whatever as part of something else. Abacus actually provides functionality to make that very easy.  

For example, if you are using something like Graph Database you can create integrations to graphically represent data from other sources. The product is structured to support integrations like this. This is the number one most valuable feature.  

The second most valuable feature is the automatic detection and generation of the linking to the other applications. This is very good and simplifies using the product dramatically.